Finding the right administrative

outsourcing solution for your law firm:

From the tactical to the transformational

A guide for managers, partners, COOs, CFOs, and CEOs looking to improve efficiency in administrative support functions

CONTENTSThe history of outsourcing in the legal sector Tactical support

Transformational change

Finding the right-fit solution for your firm

What ‘good’ looks like

3

6

12

18

21

Sam Nicholls is a Director at Intelligent Office.

Sam takes lead responsibility for managing the business development and marketing functions at Intelligent Office.

He is the first point of contact for new clients, identifying law firms’ needs and how Intelligent Office

can help meet those needs.

Jonathan King is COO at Intelligent Office.

A member of the leadership team, Jonathan has overall responsibility for service delivery to

Intelligent Office’s clients.

Jonathan and his team work closely with key client stakeholders developing meaningful objectives that are

regularly monitored and reviewed to ensure their relevance and alignment to each firm’s overall strategy.

Jonathan also takes lead responsibility for Intelligent Office’s Centres of Excellence programme and is constantly seeking

to evolve best practice be that in relation to people, process, or technology.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

THE HISTORY OF

OUTSOURCING IN THE LEGAL

SECTOR

There is a history of outsourcing which goes back to the days of the Roman Republic, when the wealthy publican class made bids on everything from tax collection, to road building, to clothing the Republic’s soldiers (Source: The Spectator). And of course, law firms themselves have been outsource providers of legal services to businesses and private individuals for centuries.

Yet it wasn’t until relatively recently that companies began to realise the benefits of outsourcing processes that don’t directly drive growth or profit—non-core operational or administration functions, for example.

Throughout the 20th century, the operational model within most sectors was one of maximising profit by exploiting competitive advantages but keeping assets firmly in-house. However, it began to change as companies found themselves bloated by managerial staff, unable to expand into the global market without upheaval of company assets and employees (Source: The Complete Business Process Handbook).

Indeed, outsourcing operational and administrative processes was not formally introduced as a business model until 1989, but has since expanded to most industries across the globe, including the legal sector (Source: Journal of Business Strategy).

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Variants of outsourcing

There are now quite a few variants when it comes to outsourcing, some of which have stood the test of time, and others that have adapted or altered to fit with the economy and changes in business needs.

Offshore: Processes are sent abroad to countries with lower labour costs, such as India, the Philippines, and China. Offshoring was prevalent in the 1990s and early 2000s, but due to positive changes in the economy of those offshoring countries and the subsequent increase in cost, its use has dropped accordingly.

Nearshore: Processes are sent outside of the base country but are still in a similar time zone. Northern Ireland, Scotland and the Republic of Ireland are considered nearshore in the UK. Less of a cost saving is made, due to the local workforce’s higher wages, but nearshoring offers geographical and cultural similarities.

Onshore: Operates in the same country as the firm that is outsourcing. Services can be delivered either offsite or onsite, i.e. in the same offices and often using the same people who TUPE transfer to the outsource provider. Intelligent Office has a proven track record in delivering secretarial and administrative support services to the UK legal sector both onsite at our clients’ premises and offsite, via four shared services centres.

How does outsourcing work in a law firm?

Over a few decades, the practise of outsourcing certain roles in, or sections of, a law firm has undergone many changes. Some firms have elected to outsource in an incremental manner augmenting their existing service provision with additional third-party support as needed, such as using offsite document production services. Whereas others have chosen to outsource their IT support, administration support and/or secretarial support function, leaving the firm’s management team and partnership free to concentrate on profitably growing their firm.

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What are the benefits of outsourcing?

A higher quality service Impact on the bottom line

Improved client experience Fee earners able to focus on growing their practices

Creation of a want to do service culture

Management teams able to focus on growing the firm

Cost savings

Standardisation and innovation Support for future growth

Re-engineer processes making them more uniform and efficient Increased flexibility and scalability

Ability to leverage industry best practice and innovation appropriate to service scope

Continuous improvement of support

Access to industry benchmarking and management that helps clients make better decisions

A simpler and more effective organisation

Reading this guide will discuss both tactical and more transformational approaches to outsourcing, and how it can help your firm…

• Implement tactical outsourcing to improve support functions incrementally… which means better trained staff and an increase in the quality of a firm’s administrative output

• Adopt a transformational approach to outsourcing administrative and secretarial support, which is becoming more popular… which means accountable and well-rounded support teams across the firm, alongside a consistently excellent administrative function

• Understand that there are three types of firms, so realising which type of firm you are is imperative before making any decisions… which means you will have a better knowledge of which outsourcing options are best for your firm and its management team

• Learn how Intelligent Office has been providing administrative and secretarial support for almost two decades… which means we know how to provide a great service to your firm

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CHAPTER ONE:TACTICALSUPPORT

There are different ways to approach outsourcing functions of your firm. In this chapter we look at the reasons why a firm might elect to outsource a smaller number of functions for more tactical rather than strategic reasons.

All secretarial and back office functions can be outsourced onsite at the firm’s offices including front of house, print and mail room, records management, and facilities and document production teams onsite at the firm’s offices. Essentially, a law firm that outsources one or more centralised support functions—particularly if they are non-secretarial in nature—can be considered to be using a more tactical and incremental approach to outsourcing.

Outsourcing any team should ensure that the pace of positive change within that team can be accelerated. This means the firm can and will benefit from higher quality and more effective support services more quickly than it would have, had these support functions remained in-house. By ensuring that administrative tasks are given to the appropriate support teams, time is given back to the fee earners and the firm overall.

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How can it help your firm?

How outsourcing the more centralised support functions can help improve efficiency throughout your firm, without disrupting business as usual, is a key question.

Outsourcing more centralised functions is often seen as a more straightforward decision that allows a firm’s management team to ‘dip their toes’ into outsourcing, rather than diving headfirst into a larger and more complex outsourcing engagement that might also include PA or document production functions. It provides an opportunity to find out what outsourcing entails, and if it works for the firm overall. Additionally, tactical changes are much easier to implement in the short term, and act as a base to build on if more support is needed.

What are the benefits of tactical outsourcing?

Well-trained employees: Specific areas of support services, such as reprographics and mailroom facilities, document production or front of house reception teams often receive little in the way of training in-house. The majority of training is usually assigned to the fee earners, and so these back-office teams end up being less well-rounded. These are the ideal functions to outsource because the training of these individuals will be significantly improved by the contracted provider therefore improving service quality to the firm and will help to quickly integrate the provider into the firm’s infrastructure and culture.

Best practice and innovation: Outsourcing presents opportunity for law firms to get a fresh pair of eyes on the way their service is delivered. Refinements can then be made, which in turn, substantially improves the quality of the overall service provided. In addition, the outsource provider should have access to best practice and market innovation that will help drive ongoing developments to their service.

Free to focus on core responsibilities: By reallocating the day-to-day management responsibilities to certain non-core outsourced managers, the focus of fee earners and the firm’s own management team can be shifted to the growth of the firm. Indeed, this is one of the major reasons why law firms outsource in this manner.

Cost saving: Of course, outsourcing can save money over time, as it gives law firms the opportunity and ability to seek-out direct cost savings. A PwC study found that as many as 65% of global organisations made cost savings of up to 40% on their support functions by outsourcing elements of their organisation (Source: PwC). And because the provider often has contracts with other companies, they are able to provide savings in areas of third party spend such as stationery, cleaning and catering services and reprographic equipment.

As an example, one of Intelligent Office’s current clients needed to re-tender its print equipment fleet. We were able to do this for them without disrupting the everyday running of the firm and through our knowledge of the market, secured a new provider for the firm reducing one off and ongoing click costs by over 30% per year.

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“““In the current environment where law firms are facing so many challenges, we need to be able to rely on the consistent provision of these services to support our busy partners and fee earners. Intelligent Office has always delivered great service whilst also professionalising our support in line with what we deliver as a law firm.”John Banister, CEO, Wiggin

Why tactical outsourcing works

When it comes to a more tactical approach to outsourcing, it’s important to know exactly what you are getting from the provider. For instance, outsourcing one functional area such as front of house or print and mailroom is easier to implement than outsourcing the firm’s secretarial and office administrative functions. Ultimately, the use of tactical outsourcing should help the firm overcome specific problems, such as inefficient practices within support teams that are maybe overlooked, to streamline the firm and improve the quality of the services being provided to the firm and its fee earners.

CASE STUDY:

FARRER & CO

Our client, Farrer & Co, wanted Intelligent Office to take over certain functions within the firm including: front of house, hospitality, file and archive management, mail room, reprographics, facilities, security, and health and safety. The firm did this with the aim of redefining the office administrative support provided to the fee earning and core business services departments in mind.

After winning the contract in 2007, Intelligent Office has achieved the following:

• Increased reprographic volumes by 101% since contract commencement with the same headcount, thus releasing fee earner and secretarial time previously spent completing these tasks

• Created a multi-skilled reprographic and mail room team, implemented through a ‘cross-training’ programme, allowing for significantly increased flexibility in resourcing

• Increased the hours of operation within the print and mail room team by 30% with the same staff headcount

• Redefined the visitor experience, ensuring that clients receive a superior service at all times, underlining Farrer & Co’s reputation for excellence

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• Assisted the firm in migrating to a paper-lite environment, through centralised e-bible and e-bundle production firm-wide

• wide.• Supported a major and ongoing refurbishment of the firm’s

existing premises at Lincoln’s Inn Fields

• Re-tendered cleaning and catering contracts, reducing cost whilst maintaining service standards

And the firm has seen the following financial benefits:

• Reduced its printing costs by 40%, through review and implementation of a print equipment audit

• Saved 32% on hospitality services, following completion of a detailed front of house review

• Reduced scanning costs within the finance function by 51%, through completing the work onsite rather than using an offsite reprographic provider

• Reduced the cost of its confidential waste collection by 53%

Intelligent Office has a track record of improving the quality, output and reliability of office administrative functions within law firms. To find out how we can help your firm, please call Sam Nicholls on +44 (0)7984 252 150.

• Assisted the firm in migrating to a paper-lite environment, through centralised e-bible and e-bundle production firm-wide

• wide.• Supported a major and ongoing refurbishment of the firm’s

existing premises at Lincoln’s Inn Fields.

• Re-tendered cleaning and catering contracts, reducing cost whilst maintaining service standards.

And the firm has seen the following financial benefits:

• Reduced its printing costs by 40%, through review and implementation of a print equipment audit

• Saved 32% on hospitality services, following completion of a detailed front of house review.

• Reduced scanning costs within the finance function by 51%, through completing the work onsite rather than using an offsite reprographic provider

• Reduced the cost of its confidential waste collection by 53%

Intelligent Office has a track record of improving the quality, output and reliability of office administrative functions within law firms. To find out how we can help your firm, please call Sam Nicholls on +44 (0)7984 252 150.

CHAPTER TWO:TRANSFORMATIONAL

CHANGEOn the other end of the outsourcing spectrum, sit the firms that want to outsource more than just sections of their administrative support. Instead, they choose to outsource their entire administrative support function including document production, office administration, facilities, and secretarial and PA teams.

Until recently, it would have been understood that a law firm wouldn’t outsource more complex and considered to be core support functions, such as PA support, but now do so regularly and with relative ease, compared to 10 or 15 years ago (Source: Financial Times).

In the early days, outsourcing providers to the legal sector were primarily associated with improving service but probably more importantly to try and reduce cost of the function being outsourced. Today, the conversations we have with management teams are far more focused on how the services we provide can support them in their ambition to use their office space wisely, to make fee earners as productive as possible and to deliver a differentiated service to their clients.

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In a recent Deloitte survey on outsourcing business processes, the data suggested that more leaders are open to the idea of transformational outsourcing. In fact, 34% of executives said they would increase their provider’s scope of service to include more functions, while 30% recognised the importance of transforming underlying processes rather than simply lifting teams and shifting them into other support roles. (Source: 2018 global outsourcing survey, Deloitte).

This is the case in the legal sector too. In a survey conducted on law firm management teams, firms leaning towards outsourcing were increasing in scope. Moreover, for those “firms that are already outsourcing, the cost effectiveness of transferring these roles externally is an increasingly [favoured] direction” (Source: Law firms: outsourcing of support staff, Thomson Reuters). So what does this mean for firms that want to outsource the whole of their secretarial and back office administrative services?

The idea of outsourcing whole functions within a law firm is not a new one, but it has seen a shift towards contracts which will restructure the firm and transform the way day-to-day tasks are done by all teams that support the fee earners. Indeed, firms now think of outsourcing providers as experts better capable of delivering strategic and often long-term solutions within the firm. By lifting all facets of the service, there’s scope to provide a better return on investment for the firm—arguably one of the key reasons for outsourcing in the first place.

We have found that the firms willing to opt for transformational change are those whose management teams recognise the long-term benefits associated with such a programme and that accept there is likely to be at least some ‘managed’ disruption while the change is delivered.

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“““Clients are looking for the most cost-effective delivery of legal services. That could mean outsourcing, offshoring, nearshoring, shared services or insourcing, and it could cover anything from document production to [LPO] legal research and writing.”

Chief Operational Officer, SNR Denton (Source: Briefing).

What are the benefits of transformational outsourcing?

Aligning tasks with the right function: In addition to the service benefits that are delivered through a more tactical outsourcing arrangement (as described in chapter one) a transformational outsourcing solution should deliver an opportunity to completely restructure secretarial and office administrative services. This ensures the right tasks are completed by the most appropriate support team, which means all tasks become the responsibility of a support function and tasks are completed by the most cost-effective resources. This improved distribution of tasks helps reduce costs in the long term and enables more expensive PA and document production functions to focus on tasks that add the most value to their fee earners and firm.

It drives productivity: By working shoulder-to-shoulder with law firm management teams, outsourcing providers can re-engineer and standardise processes, and introduce more streamlined ways of working at practice team level, positively impacting the ways that fee earners work, which drives productivity overall.

Best practice ways of working: The implementation of best practice that helps achieve specific law firm operational objectives, such as more digital ways of working, supporting agile agendas or centralising appropriate functions such as document production or client and matter onboarding, and moving them offsite to an in-house captive or third-party provider.

Creation of a one team mentality: Through creating a secretarial and office administrative support function by design, consideration can be given to managing these functions in a significantly more holistic manner, enabling demand to be better supported by available capacity. This ensures the firm maximises its spend on the outsourced support functions. By reducing bottlenecks in process, for example removing obstacles put in front of fee earners and ensuring the support teams work together more cohesively, the day-to-day battle of running the firm can be reduced. Outsourcing providers should constantly focus on finding or identifying problems, and creating solutions for them, in the most efficient and commercially viable manner.

Cost savings for the firm: A commercial model and financial focus that assists with the delivery of both direct cost savings as well as tracking the impact of best practice changes to the support services outsourced that improve key financial metrics, such as fee earner chargeable hours and cost of service per fee earner.

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Why transformational outsourcing works

Successful partnerships, fundamentally, require trust and transparency. The outsourcing supplier must be open and proactively manage feedback, quality of work, team performance, budgets and other financial metrics to ensure clarity and a joined up, consistent service. By giving the firm a dedicated point of contact for entire support functions, risk is reduced, and all work is delivered to the same standard across the firm.

While this is also true of tactical outsourcing, a smaller proportion of the firm’s functions outsourced are delivered by the provider in this scenario, so you could continue to see inefficiencies in the functions that remained in-house. This is the reason transformational outsourcing works so well, because all secretarial and administrative support functions are managed cohesively, are held accountable for the overall service provided and have a shared sense of direction and purpose.

CASE STUDY:

UK TOP 20 FIRM

Martin Arnold – Managing Partner, Wedlake Bell

A firm from the UK Top 20 commissioned Intelligent Office to review its secretarial and office administrative functions. The firm’s support structure had grown organically and was managed in practice groups. As a result, service varied across the firm and was tailored to meet individual fee earner demand, which led to inconsistency and the inability to use support resources to maximum effect.

The firm wanted its support services to become more professional and modern, and be structured cost effectively to ensure the firm continued to improve its profitability. Set against this was the firm’s drive to modernise—it wanted to compete on service and on price in a climate where clients demanded ‘more for less’.

Intelligent Office created a new legal support structure as a solution to its needs. We achieved this by: • Removing the traditional secretarial role and replacing it

with an improved PA role which had a clearly defined remit and career structure

• Establishing a more consistent and responsive approach to document production through the creation of specialist document production teams in each office

• Building ‘one stop shop’ administrative services located on the fee earning floors and supporting each practice group. The teams provide filing and e-filing support, scanning and matter administration

• In addition to this, creating a consolidated ‘Docucentre’ in each office to provide reprographics, mail and archive services

The firm saw these results:

• The cost of service per fee earner has reduced year-on-year

• In the past 12 months, the document production team completed more than 33,600 jobs, amounting to 20,844 hours, supporting a year-on-year increase in volumes with 8% less resource

• In the largest site, on average, the local administrative team completed 69,519 sheets of printing, copying and scanning per week. This was work that was previously done by PAs, secretaries and fee earners within the firm at a significantly higher opportunity cost

• In the past six months, the local administrative team in the largest site spent more than 1,874 hours completing filing and e-filing support; once again work that had previously been completed by secretaries and PAs, reducing the time they had to spend on higher value tasks

• The central Docucentre team significantly increased the volume of reprographic work completed centrally and generated a saving of over £140,000 pa by completing reprographic work onsite that had previously been sent offsite to a third-party provider

Transforming law firms’ administrative and secretarial support is Intelligent Office’s speciality, we have over 17 years’ experience. Please get in touch with Sam Nicholls on +44 (0)7984 252 150 to find out how we can transform your law firm.

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CHAPTER THREE:

FINDING THE RIGHT

OUTSOURCING SOLUTION FOR

YOUR FIRM

The decision to outsource any function of your firm needs consideration, whether it’s in regard to changing providers or transferring services to a third-party provider for the first time. Those making the decisions need to consider the feelings of stakeholders and balance them with the requirements of the wider firm and objectives.

The challenge for outsourcing providers is that firms in the legal sector are in wildly different positions when it comes to key topics. Those such as their technological maturity, management structures and agile working policies, for example.

A law firm’s culture has the most significant influence over whether the type of outsourcing solution chosen will be truly effective. Taking a transformational approach in a firm that’s reticent to make even the smallest of changes isn’t helpful and simply won’t be effective. By the same token, making incremental improvements in firms with an appetite for wide-spread change means a missed opportunity. As a result, no one outsourcing solution will fit the culture or model of every firm.

However, over 17 years’ experience tells us that there are typically three main types of law firms currently in the market. For each, there’s a suitable outsourcing solution.

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Firm #1

The first type of firm is one dead-set against change and mistrustful of the value of outsourcing. In many instances, these firms believe that they are entirely capable of delivering the standard of service they desire, but for reasons (either external or internal) they currently aren’t doing so.

These firms still think outsourcing is what it was nearly 20 years ago—a lower quality and cost-saving alternative to in-house functions. By keeping all non-core functions in-house, they believe they have more control over the quality and flexibility of output.

If this sounds familiar…

The reality is that if you could deliver a better quality of service with the resources you currently have, you would likely be doing so already.

Expecting to see an improvement in your non-core service provisions when the same problems are addressed by the same people, with the same ideas and processes, is unrealistic. You either need to dedicate the time and resources required to action the change, look for outsourcing experts that will work with you to make improvements (so you retain control) or accept the issues you’re having!

Firm #2

In some firms, management teams and the partnership are hesitant to outsource. However, these firms are often open to exploring improvement opportunities albeit on a more limited or gradual scale.

When decisions to outsource are made, the scope of service is often limited to functions that have less of a direct impact on the day-to-day lives of fee earners. These typically include centralised administrative services such as reprographics and mailroom, front of house, or records management.

While this can be frustrating for law firm management that sees the potential to transform entire functions for the better, it does not mean that compounding improvements can’t be made.

If this sounds familiar…

If your firm is sceptical of outsourcing or has been burnt by past experience, introducing small and siloed changes builds trust, giving management teams and outsourcing providers a chance to establish a partnership that works and can be developed.

Outsourcing providers with value-adding propositions will work with your management and fee earning teams to establish an appropriate balance between disrupting business as usual as little as possible while putting the necessary solutions in place to improve the provision of support in that area.

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Firm #3

Then there are the firms that are most open to change. These tend to be the ones innovating and finding ways to differentiate themselves.

These firms are generally able to articulate their vision of the future clearly and understand the importance of having the right foundations to underpin growth aspirations, including wanting to have an effective secretarial and office administrative function.

If this sounds familiar…

When looking at your outsourcing options, you will always have the choice to either ‘lift and shift’ what’s currently being done or transforming what the functions in scope look like.

Outsourcing purely operational responsibilities to an expert provider will maximise the output of that service and contribute to an overall improvement in service quality and resilience. However, outsourcing a whole suite of services, such as the administrative and/or secretarial support provision, enables you to redefine what that function means to your firm—what you expect it to contribute.

If your firm is truly focused on continuous improvement, innovation, and efficiency and accepts that change is necessary to achieve that, outsourcing for any reason other than to add value is a missed opportunity. Working in partnership with an outsourcing provider to rebuild a support infrastructure capable of serving the changing needs of your fee earners and firm will amplify what your business is capable of.

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CHAPTER FOUR:

WHAT ‘GOOD’ LOOKS LIKE

In the right conditions, almost any function of a law firm can be successfully outsourced.

We, Intelligent Office, are the leading provider of administrative and secretarial services to the UK legal sector and from our experience—over 17 years supporting law firms —we know that a more efficient and higher-quality secretarial and administrative support function is something most firms want. We also know it is all too often and too easily pushed down their priority lists.

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“““Allowing certain support staff roles in both the practice and business of law to be outsourced has been particularly beneficial in enabling law firms to focus in on the evolution of legal services.”

Legal Executive Institute, Thomson Reuters

However, according to PwC, law firms realise the potential value of outsourced support functions, and what they can contribute. In the most recent edition of PwC’s annual Law Firms’ Survey report (2018), for example, while ‘improving the use of technology’ remained the top priority for business support, ‘standardising and centralising processes’ was knocked from second to third in line and was replaced with ‘supporting improvements in service offering’. Of course, the latter two focuses can be delivered in-house, but the fact remains they can be delivered more effectively when outsourced, due to the providers’ specific training in core competencies.

In our experience, successful outsourcing relationships hinge on:

1. True partnership2. Transparency and shared goals3. Agile contracts and services

Of course, outsourcing isn’t a silver bullet solution. When firms outsource, they should know what they want to achieve from the decision. Responsibility for the success of meeting that objective needs to be shared. If an outsourcer is expected to drive real value, they will require input and support from fee earners and those in positions of authority.

“...you don’t simply hand over the risk

and expect to walk away with anything

close to a winning formula […] It is a

relationship which needs open and constant

communication to build the trust needed

that both sides are looking out for each

other’s best interests”

—Future of Outsourcing, Raconteur

TRUE PARTNERSHIP

1.

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True Partnership

2.

“Customers are increasingly willing to

‘co-create’ the desired outcomes, rather

than simply issuing a tender and expecting

a partner to be as aligned and capable as

the tender document demands.”

—Future of Outsourcing, Raconteur

“70% of respondents in fact embed

innovation clauses within their services

contracts”

—Outsourcing in Europe, EY

TRANSPARENCY AND SHARED

GOALS

AGILE CONTRACTS AND SERVICESSuccessful partnerships require trust and transparency, where

the outsourcing provider is open about staffing, timelines, issues and risks, and the law firm stands in support. Without sharing knowledge in a reciprocal manner, the relationship will become disjointed—each rowing in a different direction. Being transparent about opportunities and threats means no surprises for either party, making it much more likely that the objective is achieved.

The legal sector is quickly evolving. The outsourcing relationship needs to deliver value for the provider and law firm at all times. This is only possible if the outsourcer is flexible to its clients’ needs and is in a position to respond to them quickly.

3.

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Get in touch

If you think that Intelligent Office can help improve your firm’s support teams, either through incremental improvement or in a more transformational manner, then don’t hesitate to get in touch. We are the UK’s leading provider of secretarial and administrative support services to the legal sector, and build high-functioning, adaptable and forward-thinking teams that are 100% dedicated to delivering an excellent service.

We pride ourselves on our ability to work alongside some of the best and biggest firms in the legal sector. So if you’d like to discuss how we can work with you to get your administrative support function working at optimal efficiency, please get in touch.

+44 (0)7984 252 150sam.nicholls@intelligentofficeuk.com

Sam Nicholls, Director

+44 (0)7984 252 150 sam.nicholls@intelligentofficeuk.com28 Hobbs Lane, Bristol, BS1 5EE

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